The Legendary Fox Singer
by dumbdumpbadumpa
Summary: Foxes terrorize the chicken farmers, and Rick leaves Morty to find a solution, but, knowing Morty, it's going to end up traumatizing one or both of them.
1. Green Blod

A/N : It's heavily influenced by Over The Garden Wall, but not a crossover. It also influenced by Paradise Lost, but only a little. It's Rick and Morty,

* * *

Morty's hands were bloody, smeared with dark green. He watched himself grab the plastic knob on the screen door, mind flickering from iconic horror movies to his green fingers. "Hey Rick," He mumbled urgently.

"Morty, dammit!" Rick stomped through the fragile house. "Put that shit down." He yanked the screen door, and it opened with a scream along the runners, and Morty's hand fell behind his back. "Put it down, Morty—Outside."

Morty trudged to the edge of the porch and laid the mutilated cheeckeneep corpse on the top step of the dark gray wooden deck, and shook a feather of his arm. Rick came to join him at the steps.

Morty looked at him, and Rick held his eyes for a moment before looking out. They stood together with the thing at their feet, and they looked out at the giant trees on the creek at the edge of the property. A thin fence separated the green expense of grass from the dense patch of oaks, crawdads, and black water and trunks. Gnarled black trunks under a million black leaves, hanging stagnant and blocking the second sunset.

"What's out there?"

"You know it's juuuurgst foxeeps, quit being so, being so melodramatic, M-Morty."

"Rick..."

"What, are you sceeeaared of the shadows, Morty? Whoo, oh boy, how magical, foxeeps. They're, they're gonna come, riiiise up out of the shadows..." Rick hunched his shoulders and swung his arms like a zombie, then went back inside. "Come wash your hands, you look like you fisted it to death."

"Rick," Morty whined, "That's disgusting."

"I know, wh-why would you do that, Morty, to our own cheekeneep. It trusted you, Morty." Rick rambled from the living room, kicking his shoes off.

Morty sighed and gave a last glance to the gutted cheekeneep. The least foxeeps could do was eat the whole thing and not leave half a body for Morty to have nightmares about.

He went inside, closing the screen with a long slow keen.

It had trusted him, you know, to protect it from the elements. It was so innocent and beautiful. Or maybe it only trusted Rick. You can never tell if cheekeneeps see that you're at least trying, you're sure trying your best but no one cares, they just want results. Trying only counts in horses, gernards, and gift giving. Everything else leads to disappointment, guilt, and the blood of the innocent.

* * *

Morty sat with the cheekeneeps all night, next to their hutch, even though it was cold and windy out here. He had his shoes on, this time.

A pair of small eyes came to stare wearily at him. Morty was too naïve to be scared, too mystical and secretly romantic to be arfaid of the wild, of monsters, of homicidal creatures staring at him.

The giant trees rustled and groaned, leaves straining against the trunk, against the wind. Morty shivered, and the foxeep stood there.

"G-go away..."

The foxeeps eyes grew and its form was the entire night, eyes centered. Morty's eyes swam and warped the darkness into a pulsing tunnel, with yellow eyes at the end.

Morty had a rifle.

The eyes moved, disappeared, left. And Morty fell asleep.

"God dammit Morty."

He woke to pitch dark and something nudging his side.

It was 9:30 pm. "Get up you, you, you, you stupid icicle. Whaaauuhrpt's wrong with you, are you psyyyyhhchotic?" Rick pulled him up with some tactfullness and held him on his feet with one arm. "You looked dead, you twerp. Ge-ge-get insidee."

"I s—I saw the fox." Morty said it once or twice, leaning on Rick, and they went inside.

"I hope it waaauhrpas worth it." Rick said, pulling open the screen door, and scaring something under the porch into a fluttery thump. It startled Morty, a little, but didn't wake him up.

* * *

The gun was still there in the dewy grass and white clovers by the hutch, in the morning. Morty picked it up by the muzzle and held it like a dead cheekeneep.

The screen door screeched. "Morty! Clean the cheekeneep shit real good, then get in here and help me with breakfast."

Mmm.

Morty glanced at the oak trees.

"M-maybe we should go to town with some of them."

"I'm not sharing these with anyone who's not family." Rick pointed his spatula at Morty.

He smiled and ate a blueberry. "Um. I meant the cheeckeneeps."

"Oh." Rick leaned on the counter of their tiny kitchen, warm and buttery, syrup and caramel, green and yellow and old. "I don't know about that Morty. How many even do we have now. There's a limited window. Of cheekeneeps. How many we got left?" He flipped the pancake.

"Some."

* * *

A/N : More background on the Planet of the Eeps coming soon


	2. Who's Kermitting Homicide Now?

"What the hell is a foxeep singer?" Rick craned his neck with his customary frown, carved deep into his old face. There was a figure under the awning of the hardware store, half in shadow. It had a trench coat and a sign that said Foxeep Singer. The hardware store was dry and gray.

"Let's ask him, Rick. He looks interesting. He-he-he-he could help us..." Morty said, holding the worn edge of their cart as it jiggled down the road to the market. With cheeckeneeps, and, eggs.

"Eh, I ain't b-buying it. Prolly a scam aaarrtist trying to get a dollar while he can. Making money off our suffering, Morty."

Morty pouted.

He sat in the cart while Rick talked to the directors of the market, and looked at the cheeckeneeps while Rick tied the muleeps up. "Morty help me get the thing set up."

Morty scooped up a cheeckeneep, holding it against his chest and petting it. He walked it over to the booth Rick was putting up.

* * *

Rick did his advertising by wolf-whistling or heckling his regulars from across the street as they carried their vegetables and dried oxeneep tails.

"Hey, while you're here, m'am, I got a proposition for you..."

Morty grabbed a box of eggs for the woman, while she blushed and snorted at Rick. Rick grabbed a cheeckeneep and held it out to her. "Want some cheeckeneeps of your very own?"

She laughed and paid him. "No thanks boys."

Morty pouted at her and handed over the eggs.

Everyone, they just bought their eggs and left. The more impatient Rick got, the more he drank. "Hey ladies, like fluffy chicke—chee-ch—cheekeneeps? Come on—Come pet this cheeckeneep—It's so soft. Pet my cheeckeneep! S—hey you!"

While Rick made his pitch for cheeckeneep relocation, Morty's curiosity forced him to walk.

* * *

He found the fox singer and watched him. He had a clean sign, a fur hat, and a trenchcoat wth the collar up. He was green, like all the native Eeeplings. The general composition of the planet was equal parts copper and carbon, except the copper people outnumbered the carbon people, and there was also a lot of silicon, nitrogen, and oxygen.

Anyways, the Fox Singer was beautiful and shiny.

"Um, hello, th—yeah, hello." Morty told him.

"Hello, Orchard Son. I Am The Legendary Fox Singer." He extended a gloved hand and Morty shook it. He didn't have the handshake of a sales man. The Fox Singer took his hand back and his sleeve flopped over it.

"Y-you sing to foxeeps?"

His whole body nodded. "Yes, I Sing Them Lullabies And They Stop." The Fox Singer said.

"They, they... stop?"

"Yes, They Stop Eating Cheekeneeps. Don't Worry, I Don't Kill Them."

Morty nodded, hitting a wall in his social brain, thinking, maybe it would be polite and interesting to ask the Fox Singer what sort of lullabies could convince foxeeps not to steal people's livelihoods, but, Morty didn't want to imply how ridiculous fox singing sort of sounded.

"Foxeeps are very intelligent, Morty. They listen to me. They like music."

Morty stared at him, idolly enjoying the fervor in his tone. "They...wait, how-how-how did you know my name?" He searched the Singer's face, only finding shadows from his hat and collar.

"I Know All The Names Of Potential Clients. Plus, There's, Like, 300 People Living Out Around Here. It's Not Very Hard To Remember Names."

"Oh, well, I've never seen you here before, but, uh, there's lots of things I don't notice sometimes, ahah, okay." Morty hates talking to strangers Morty hates t

"You Sound Tired. I Will Be Here Each Day The Market Is In."

Morty itched his cheek, realizing he was probably tired form last night. "No, it's fine. Sorry."

The Fox Singer nodded and tried to explain why he knew Morty's name. "It Takes A True Business Man To Roam The Valleys And Hills Looking For Foxeeps To Argue Moral Values With In The Form Of Song, And To Claim Its For The Farmer's Sake."

"Are-are-are you dong it because you like foxeeps, o-or?"

"I Do It Because... I Have To." The Fox Singer said. "The Proverbial 'You Gotta' Of Things I'm Doing."

"Oh, is it, like, you're fated to do this? That's kind of cool."

The Fox Singer chuckled. "Can You Relate?" He said.

"Well, my parents, you know, came here, with the colonials, because my dad... We needed a new start. But. You know." Morty said. Everything had been fine for the first 10 years, despite the adverse weather, copper, and aderse space viruses. The supplies, suppliments, and vaccines help up. Until, the planet developed a new virus for the carbon humans. Cat fever, they called it. The copper people got a fever and one or two of them succumbed, and the carbon people's immune system completely turned against them. Up to 70% of the carbon people died. Morty was, like, seven, at the time, and completely unaffected. His mother and sister were also immune, but.

"That's So Sad. I Don't Even Like Thinking Of It."

"Yeah. Lucky for me I was still a baby."

"Yes. I Wonder If Anyone Else Will Come By Here? Will They Meet The Same Fate? Is It Only Copper That Can Live Here?"

"Those are some big questions. Maybe a virus will came through space and live here, that counts, doesn't it? Or maybe there'll be a virus that doesn't kill anyone. There-there should be more of those. They had a virus like that in a video I like, it had good side effects, so people spread it all over their game. I haven't gotten it yet."

"Well Good Luck." The Fox Singer said. "You Have A Nobel Mind, Morty."

"Thanks. I try."

"It's Good To Be Positive, Thoughtful."

"It's not easy."

"You Don't Have To Tell Me Twice." The Singer spun his sign. "From Cheeckeneeps To Lullabies, It Seems Nothing Is Biting."

"Aw." Morty said.

* * *

All the eggs were sold and Rick was very drunk.

"Oh my God." Morty said. "What time is it."

"It's almost 11, Morty, you little snacker, running off and, and slacking off.

"Aw jeez Rick I'm sorry. I lost track of time."

"Is thaaaat soooo?"

"Yeah, I was, I was talking to somebody."

"Mmmmmmmmmmmm."

"What?" Morty said.

"Nothing."

"Did we sell any cheeckeneeps?"

"No."

"Aw." No hope for them now, they're all stuck with Morty. They're like all the wafer cookies Rick keeps up in the top cupboard behind the scotch. They're like, they're like the human beings that came to this planet and then the earth got blown up and the viruseeps climbed into the counter and ate plenty of wafers, but only enough so Rick would think it was normal and just buy more. The foxes know where the cookies are, they're going to eat them, no matter what. The, the, even if it means getting caught and yelled at for being n the booze cabinet. Even f they got shot at. You can't fight off all the foxeeps n the forest with a shotgun and you can't fight off a teenager with words. They, they keep eating. They're just gonna keep eating.

Rick shrugged. "We'll get over it."

"Rick no. We're cheeckeneep farmers!"

"Yeah Morty? Whoopdy-doo."

"I don't want—It's really hot out here, Rick." Morty didn't want to argue about which day they would starve to death, and he didn't want to do it in the middle of town.

"We, we, we gotta do this Morty. This is, this is the thing that's happening to us. You and me, and our cheeckeneeps, and we have to... figure it out. You know. This is one bad year, it's the thing that's happening, some shit's always gotta be happening to you! Foxeeps were, like, no big thing, remember last year? One foxeep. And I made you shoot it."

Morty got bored/angry with Rick and zoned out/purposefully stopped listening.

"What. What." Rick scrutinized Morty. "You, you wanna pay the hocus pocus fox guy, don't you?" Rick said. "Is that where you were?" Rick laughed. "That guy's a carpet bagger, Morty. What did he say to you? Hi! Billy Mays here!"

"No. He's not just a glad handler, Rick."

"Oh yeah. Is that what he told you?"

"He's a genuine guy, Rick. Not that you'd know anything about that."

"Oh yeah? Well I don't want to hear it, I'm out here doing things and you're out trying to, just, do things. I'm tired of this shit, Morty!" Rick said. He wasn't tired of Morty's shit anymore, he was just tired.

"I'm... I'm just saying—we have to consider all views. We're going to starve."

Rick crossed his arms. "So's the fox singer."

"He-eee can help us."

"Sometimes there's no needle in the hay stack, Morty, sometimes you're just under a bunch of fucking hay." Rick's voice strained to make Morty understand in his heart. To accept of his own will the facts Rick needed him to learn. The facts that they were just fucked, apparently. Nice job teaching Morty things, Rick.

Morty just gave up. They were both just too stubborn, I guess. Rick too, he's, he's, well I guess you could call him cynical, but Morty would rather you just call him an asshole.

They made their way home. When they passed the Fox Singer, Morty smiled at him, and waved, and the Fox Singer waved and flipped his sign.

Morty saw an oak tree and hummed to himself. Rick sighed and put his fingers on his temple.


End file.
